Sunday, July 26, 2026

Grain of Salt, But ...

According to The Telegraph (and other sources):

Donald Trump has paused plans to escalate the war on Iran after being warned that the US is running low on missiles.

For the first time in nearly two weeks, the US president called off strikes on the Islamic Republic over the weekend and has set aside plans to return to major combat operations.

I normally take claims of munitions shortages with a huge grain of salt.

In the 1950s, a supposed "bomber gap" versus the Soviet Union was used to justify more US military spending.

In the 1960, the "bomber gap" became a "missile gap" in general and an "anti-ballistic missile gap" in particular.

For the last four years, various parties have claimed the US is in the grip of "severe munitions shortages" as a reason to stop sending stuff to Ukraine ... even as the US military continually promoted various iterations of "the largest live-fire exercise EVAH!" in, among other places, the Pacific Rim region.

So, at a longer-term strategic level, I consider such "shortage" claims as mostly Baghdad Bob stuff.

But this is seems to be a shorter-term claim and that makes it a little more believable. "Yeah, we need to get more interceptors over there before we give the Iranians an excuse to come at us."

Logistics -- the ability to get the stuff where you need it to be, when you need it to be there -- is what wins or loses wars.

And one of the few military advantages the Iranian regime has in this particular war is that it doesn't have to to spend three weeks shipping ordnance 10,000 miles by sea to put it where it's needed.

On the other hand, ever since World War 2 the US regime has been excellent at delivering the goods across oceans quickly. There are always problems (during Desert Storm, my unit was on short rations for a couple of weeks because they had to prioritize the delivery of bullets over delivering beans in case things blew up suddenly), but those problems get solved (by the time the war ended we were getting reasonably good hot chow twice a day, MREs one meal a day, and had all kinds of extra stuff, from pallets of canned peanut butter to cases of "sous vide" vacuum-sealed dinners -- I lost about 20 pounds early but gained 10 pounds back before coming home).

Of course, this could be a ruse ("let's try to bait them into attacking and then surprise them"), but if it's the truth it's not likely catastrophic, or even a sign of some avoidable failure.

Wordle 1863 Hint

Hint: The larval form of wine.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle after the ad below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

First Letter: G

Saturday, July 25, 2026

OK, I Made The Effort ...

... to find an American watch (pursuant to the "buy American!" whining in comments).

So far as I can tell, there are precisely two companies which make their watches entirely in America.

RGM Watch Company makes everything right here in the US. I like their Model 150 (not an affiliate link). Price: $3,450.

Vortic Watches uses antique American-made pocket watch movements and makes the other parts right here in the US. I like their Springfield 178 (not an affiliate link). Price: $4,900.

The cheapest of the two would set me back 100 times as much money as a perfectly good Casio FT500WC (not an affiliate link). In fact, it would cost me less than the Casio plus the 2001 Harley-Davidson Sportster 883 (made in America) I'm looking at in another browser tab right now.

I don't know if I'll buy the Harley (probably not), but I'm still pretty sure I'll go with the Casio.